Harvey Danger- who's afraid of downloading?

Seattle combo Harvey Danger isn't exactly executing a first by putting out their new album Little By Little... for a free download (Wilco and others beat them to that). What is newsworthy is that it's worth your bandwidth to get the music- it's easily much better than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot not to mention a piece of competing adult-pop like Liz Phair's latest (which makes her appreciate her last record now) if not Fiona's re-tooled album. Like Fiona, they also flirt with theatrics, which usually spell B-A-R-F when applied to rock, but HD adds enough cynicism and anger to their songs to make them compelling enough. It's both a very pretty and very ugly record. Forget guilty pleasure- this is just pleasure.

The band themselves have this statement from their website, which nicely thumbs its nose at the tunnel-visioned RIAA:

"In preparing to self-release our new album, we thought long and hard about how best to use the internet. Given our unusual history, and a long-held sense that the practice now being demonized by the music biz as '“illegal'” file sharing can be a friend to the independent musician, we have decided to embrace the indisputable fact of music in th21stst century, put our money where our mouth is, and make our record, Little By Little…, available for download via Bittorrent, and at our website. We'’re not streaming, or offering 30-second song samples, or annoying you with digital rights management software; we'’re putting up the whole record, for free, forever. Full stop. Please help yourself; if you like it, please share with friends."

"Of course, the CD will also be for sale on the site, as well as in fine independent record stores across the country, in a deluxe package that includes a 30-minute bonus disc that serves as a companion piece to the record proper (retail price for the package 11.99)."

Needless to say, I downloaded the record but I'm also going to shell out the cash for the CD. Hope you can do the same.

(Thanks to Slashdot for the tip-off)